A new board member was appointed to the Callaway County Ambulance District's Board of Directors Tuesday evening.
Greg Miller will replace Brian Schmidt, who recently resigned because he moved out of the district. Schmidt served on the board since April 2014.
"He brought to the board several years of invaluable firefighter experience, which is beneficial because it allowed for good understanding of what we do at the district," Board Director Charles Anderson said.
Anderson added that Schmidt's contributions to board meetings will be missed.
"All of the operating revenue items are related to the volume we've done more than anything," Anderson said. "We've have had a higher call volume and a lower non-transport volume, which results in a higher transport volume."
He said they are also why the board is noticing higher gross patient care revenue, higher not allowed charges and higher bad debt.
While glancing at board's report, Anderson added that a lot of uninsured people are using ambulance services.
"It runs its course and they haven't paid, so they get turned over to collections (collection agencies)," Anderson said.
District 4 Board Member Jeff Stone said if whoever who called for medical assistance or needs to be transferred knows they'll never be able to afford the care and if the board knows the individual will never afford it, that the collection step be skipped.
"The opportunity for our customers is that at some time during the process we identify that they're not going to be able to pay," Stone said. "They're at an income threshold, and anyone else would have given them financial assistance, then we stop the billing process, then they doesn't go to collections and it doesn't go toward bad debt."
Anderson said the district has to make every effort to collect before a specific case can be turned over to charity care or considered to be written off.
"We'd have to be really careful because you can then potentially run a foul of the medicare program by writing off too much," Anderson said. "If you as the customer ask then we're happy to send you the paper work and take a look at it for you."
After a brief wrap up on the topic, the meeting's agenda shifted to briefly discussing the district's monthly call statistics for July.
Station 1 dispatched emergency responders 182 times in July - the second most calls received in one month this year, right behind March with 183 calls. In July, all three stations responded to the most emergency and non-emergency calls so far in 2015 with a monthly total of 450.
Anderson said the year to date total for all three stations was 2,839 - a 111 increase in calls compared to this time last year.